Editor’s Note: Over the next several weeks, The Knight Crier will be featuring faculty and staff members outside of North Penn High School, so that the current NPHS students can see what their  favorite faculty and staff members from elementary and middle school have been up to over the last several years.

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LANSDALE – Having been a part of the Penndale faculty for twenty-seven years and counting, Mr. John (Larry) Corson has been teaching art and in so doing has witnessed and taken part in the many changes and adaptations of the school over that time.

Mr. Corson not only teaches in the North Penn school district but also was enrolled as a student,  making him a former knight himself. He graduated from North Penn having participated on the football and baseball teams – two teams he later coached for fifteen years. Then, his senior year, he also added track to his busy sport schedule. In love with sports, yet highly artistic, Corson graduated not entirely sure where college would lead him, not to mention never knowing that he would eventually end up back in the halls of Penndale Middle School.

From Passion to Profession

“First I wanted to be a professional athlete, but then that reality ended rather quickly in high school,”  Corson said. “I grew up loving sports, and I still do, but I just enjoyed drawing. When I got grounded I would be sent to my room, and I would draw. In the end, I got better at drawing then I did at sports. It was then that I knew that I wanted to do something in the art field, and at first it was like graphic design or advertising, but it was a little bit of a different time then so it was more commercial art rather than design with computers and such.”

Having been unsure of the career path he wanted to pursue, like many of the North Penn seniors graduating this June, his interest in art, in addition with his amicability and preference to be around people, all tied together into art education.

“I got lucky because I went to North Penn so that’s where I first started with applications,” he stated. After a half a year of subbing, Mr. Corson was offered a full-time position as an art teacher the following year – this was all twenty-sever years ago.

“I’ve always been at Penndale,” Corson shared, “which is amazing because when I first started this building held grades seven, eight, and nine, but then it changed to only being eighth and ninth grade. Then, at one point, every ninth grader at North Penn went here and then it went back to seventh, eighth, and ninth grade. Ironically, this is what it was like when I was growing up.”

When the building was strictly eighth and ninth graders, as Pennbrook and Pennfield were grades sixth and seventh, Penndale’s sports teams ended up being split into two: a Columbia and a Navy. So, all within the same school, there were two teams for each sport. However, even though Mr. Corson loves his sports, he had to agree that his preference was when the whole building was strictly a freshman center.

“When it was just the ninth grade here the whole school was doing the same thing,” he explained, “whereas, now, seventh grade is completely different from ninth grade: Seventh grade has teams while ninth grade is more like the ‘high school approach’. So, to me, in a perfect world, that would be the best setup, just to have a freshman center like that.”

Through it all though, no matter the setup of the school, or the grade level of his students, Corson couldn’t help admitting that“I don’t mean to sound corny, but in all honestly, I love my job, and I always have. I’m so lucky in that way.”

Curriculum and Innovative Projects

Now, Corson finds himself teaching seventh grade Art Foundations 1 and eighth grade Art Foundation 2, which are both like art minors; ninth grade related fine arts, which is the creative combination of music and art; and ninth grade art majors.

“My favorite part of my work day would probably be the art majors,” Corson hesitantly admitted. “It’s only because they actually want to be here. I mean, no one forced them to take the class – it wasn’t a requirement. My students feel like I do; they just want to learn more and have fun, and they are just eager to work on the next project. They are like sponges, and they just keep wanting more and more.”

Right now,  Corson’s students are working on the pastel eyes project – a project he started doing with students two years ago. The idea originally came from the eighth grade project where students were working on a Georgia O’Keeffe water color painting, and one student ended up doing the eye of an animal. That sparked inspiration in the minds of  Corson and the other art teachers and they found themselves asking: “well what if we blew these up?” or “what if we did pastel?” or “what if we did this on black paper?”

“It just grew from there” said Corson. “And now it’s become a favorite project and even the eighth graders are asking when they get to do it. Now that it’s such a big expectation we have to do it with the art majors because if we didn’t it would be like a revolt,” he laughed.

 After the pastel eye project, the art majors will continue their curriculum and start working with clay which, as observed Corson, “the students love. Me, not so much, but the students definitely enjoy working with clay. That’s where we are right now.”

“It’s me who comes up with the projects,” Mr. Corson continued. “There is a curriculum – a guide – to what I have to teach, but say I have to teach face proportions; it is up to me to come up with the project, so for that students could do like a movie poster based on their face portrait or something like that. This is where the creativity comes in to develop the project.”

Unfortunately, all project ideas cannot be supported as necessary materials are not always readily available, not to mention, are costly.

“I don’t want to sound negative,” Corson started, “but there are a lot of budget restraints which make it hard because in the curriculum you want to be creative, but you have to work with what you have.”

Building Strong Foundations and Service

He continued, “The foundation of art, it is always the same: the elements of art, and the principles of design, etc. etc. So that kind of thing stays the same each year, but with the budget you have to make it work while still doing something creative. We are always balancing the process and the product because we want the community to see what the students are making but it is just as important to learn through making these projects. To practice still-life or drawing people, that’s really important for learning, but sometimes there’s no resulting product, and sometimes I think it is more important to have the practice than the final piece.”

Not only are students working on certain skills and building up their art portfolios, but also, Corson has seemingly worked in a service project each year to benefit the community.

“Each year we have different things come up,” Corson explained. “Right now, we do not have anything set, but last year we did something really neat that we set up with CHOP children’s hospital. Just to help inspire the sick children, we sent pictures and artwork to the patients. It was actually Elayna Milano’s idea originally, and of course with art majors and their ideas, I had to run with it, and we ended up drawing pictures and basically sending them to the kids to put some smiles on their faces.”

This year, even though there is no set service project yet, the art majors continue to contribute to the school as they decorate the halls with murals. They continue the tradition that was started in the cafeteria where each year the students create a mural that depicts their vision of the future.

“It’s really neat is how the different years are starting to spread throughout the school. I’m really thrilled with that,” said Corson. “One year we decorated the ceilings with flags from different countries while another year we painted a mural in the stairwell and last year we did the front of the library.”

Corson adamantly agreed that these projects around the school and community are the ones most cherished. He claimed that, “The best memories are the goofy experiences from working in places like the hallways or after school. For example, last year we helped paint the back drop for the theater and we ended up coming in on a Saturday to work on it. Those times are the best because you aren’t in school anymore. Its life and you are simply enjoying it but at the same time things are getting done and the kids are learning. The best experiences are not necessarily at a desk, in a room, but outside.”

“Plus,” he added, “doing things like painting murals, you get so much more out of it. Yea, you learn how to paint on a wall, but there’s so much more to it. You get to work with other people and learn cooperation and teamwork while expanding your creativity.”

Creative Connections

Creativity is a major component of art, and as an art teacher Corson finds his creativity running wild as he explained that all his inspiration for his projects are simply, “just around.”

“I think it is just where ever my thoughts are,” he replied. “For example, when we start talking about line, I’m thinking of trees. Or if we are talking about blending and color I take notice of the pink sky as I’m driving to school in the morning. It just seems to be that where ever the curriculum is taking us, that is what I’m seeing as I go through my day. I can’t escape it.  It’s almost as if it’s haunting me. I mean, it’s always around, but certain things come into focus. Plus as the years continue, I can take previous projects that had worked in the past and tweak them. I really just play with the ideas and even with the other art teachers we talk about ideas and stuff, and an idea might come where I just put my own twist on it.”

Of course, art history and infamous artists also provide inspiration, and Corson shared his favorite artists.

“MC Escher is always fascinating to me because all the optical illusions in his work pull me back,” he started.  “My favorite though, and it might be a little bizarre, is Salvador Dali, because he can do paintings that look very realistic but just cannot happen. To me, that’s the ultimate in art: You take something that is impossible but make it work.”

“I think it is amazing to have the talent to make something look really realistic like a photograph,” he elaborated, “but if you are just going to repeat something you could simply just take a picture of, I don’t find it as impressive, whereas Salvador Dali took you into this fantasy world. I find it so cool.”

Inspiration,  Leadership, and a Perpetual Passion for Educating

Despite where their inspiration comes from or which project they are working on or what problem they are trying to tackle, Corson continues to advise his students in portraying the importance of “Doing the best that you possibly can at whatever you are doing. Not just at what you want to do, but what you should or need to be doing.”

“Always as a kid I heard, ‘you aren’t working up to your potential’” Corson remembered. “I was told that all the time, and I never really knew what it meant, but now having my own kids and teaching a thousand kids, there are so many of them that are just trying to get to the end of the day and not thinking about what the future brings. But, if they just do what is asked of them, and do the best that they can it is going to open a lot of doors. I know that when I was in school, I always thought that it was the best of the best and then everyone else: everyone else just being the rest, but that is not the case. There are so many opportunities and choices out there.”

There’s no doubt Mr. John (Larry) Corson leaves an impression on his students, and he can only hope that they learned to the extent of their abilities while in his classroom; lessons that they will continue throughout their lives.

“It’s always great to see what former students are doing in high school and stuff, however, it is hard to stay in touch after they leave the district, but it’s neat to see where people end up,” he said.

“I’m not involved in Facebook or anything like that, but I almost want to just to be in touch with some of my students. I mean, I find myself teaching kids of former students in class now and that’s pretty wild. It’s amazing because at back to school night people will come up to me and be like ‘yea, I had you as a teacher’ and I’m looking at two parents, and I can’t help but thinking, ‘whoa’. You don’t even think of them as kids, but then the more you talk to them it just starts coming back to you and you make the connection, ‘oh yeah! You sat right over there next to so-and-so.’”

The saying “it’s a small world” continues in the North Penn community as Mr. Corson shared that “There are teachers who are teaching at Penndale that I had taught in class. And then, just like when I started teaching here, it was the same thing; I started teaching and other teachers were working with me that had taught me when I went to Penndale. The best part is that I’m still in contact with a lot of them.”